As a result of its open-door policies and 30 years of reform, China
has become the “world’s factory” and given rise to a new working
class of rural migrant workers. This process has underlain a path of
(semi-)proletarianization of Chinese peasant-workers: now the second
generation is experiencing dagong, working for a boss, in industrialized
towns and cities. Drawing on workers’ narratives and
ethnographic studies in Shenzhen and Dongguan between 2005 and
2008, this study focuses on the subjective experiences of the second
generation of dagongmei / dagongzai (female migrant workers /
male migrant workers), who have developed new for